While I was shopping for Christmas gifts at William Sonoma, I discovered a bag of gluten free flour. It said that you can use it as a flour substitute – cup for cup. Hence the name: Cup4Cup (C4C) gluten free flour. It was not cheap, but I had to buy it and try it for myself. I also went on their site to look for recipes and saw that they were having a Holiday Cookie contest. Since I was going to bake some cookies for Christmas anyway, I thought ‘why not?’. And so that’s how I came to enter the contest and actually became one of the two runners up!
In case any of you are interested, here’s the recipe that I submitted. It has been tested and approved by chef Lena Kwak (co-founder of French Laundry’s Cup4Cup )!
Makes about 36 cookies
Cookies:
1 1/2 cup C4C gluten free flour
1/2 cup almond meal (finely ground almonds w/ skin)
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup + 3 T sugar (3 T sugar for dipping)
1/4 tsp kosher salt
3 T freshly grated meyer lemon zest
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
Icing:
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
2 T fresh meyer lemon juice
If you can’t buy any almond meal(I used Trader Joe’s), just make your own – finely chop almonds in your food processor.
Mix together the butter and 1 cup of the sugar until creamy. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Gradually mix in the lemon zest and the almond meal. Then slowly add in the C4C flour, a little at a time, beat the dough until it is combined well, and chill it, covered for 2 hours.
Put the 3 T of sugar in a small plate. Take the chilled dough and form the dough into walnut-size balls and arrange them 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Moisten the bottom of a glass with water and dip it in the plate with sugar to coat the bottom with sugar. Flatten the cookie balls to about 2 in in diameter with the bottom of this glass. Repeat before each cookie.
Bake the cookies in the middle rack of a preheated 350°F. oven for 12 – 13 minutes, or until they are golden around the edges, transfer them to racks, and let them cool.
Make the icing by whisking the sugar and the lemon juice in a small bowl. Drizzle or spread the icing over the cookies. Decorate with luster pearls or other colored sugars.
* If using regular lemon, you may want to reduce the amount of zest to 2 T.
* Using the almond meal give this cookie more texture and body.
Thank you C4C for making this gluten free flour available! I can’t wait to make more stuff with this.
What's for dinner, Mom? 
These cookies ROCK! I found your blog after seeing the cup4cup contest and wanting to make these. They are even better than I imagined! Don’t forget to add the salt, though, as it was left out of the recipe directions.
Hi Karen, so sorry for the very very late response. I somehow missed your comment. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I will add the salting part to the directions. Hope you are well! Best wishes